low, evil chuckle. “You bastards. You assholes. You fucking shitbugs,” he said. “How stupid do you think I am? Don’t you see that I’m on to you? That I know your game? You’re not waiting for dark anymore, you’re just waiting for an opportunity, any opportunity. Any chance you can get to kill me. Oh, I see it in your eyes. I see it just fine.”
Cook and Fabrini looked at each other. Their eyes said volumes. Saks was starting to crack and there was no denying it any longer. The man was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
Menhaus studied his feet for a time, then said, “Why should we kill you, Saks? Christ, we need you. You’re the only one who can pull us through this. You’re the only guy here who has any sea experience. If you can’t save our asses, nobody can.”
“Yeah,” Saks said.
Something like that, coming from anyone but Menhaus, would have been greeted with a hateful outburst. But there was something harmless about Menhaus. Something almost brotherly. It was hard to imagine the big jolly man hurting anything or anyone. He seemed incapable. The sort of guy who was a sucker for kids and small animals.
Menhaus saw his opening and went for it. “I’m not a violent man, Saks. I’ve lost just about every fight I’ve ever been in. And most of ‘em I ran away from. It’s just not in me to hurt anyone. I don’t have what it takes. So when I tell you that I wouldn’t let these guys hurt you, you can believe me. If it comes down to that, I’ll warn you. And I’ll stand by you.”
Fabrini, whose brain worked very simply, looked like he’d been slapped. “What are you, Menhaus? Fucking crazy? This guy’s a psycho.”
“Shut the fuck up, Fabrini, or I swear to God I’ll kill you,” Saks snapped, his voice hot and electric.
Tendons strained in his neck when he said this. His eyes bulged. A vein throbbed at his temple. His face was the color of blood. He wasn’t fooling around and they all saw it now.
“What I said is-” Menhaus began, trying to undo the damage.
“What you said I want to believe,” Saks told him. “You don’t know how much I want to believe that. But I don’t know. I just don’t know. You’re either real sincere or real slick. I don’t know which.”
Menhaus was breathing heavy now. “I meant it, Saks. I meant every word.”
Saks stared him down. Maybe looking for something that would tell him it was all a lie. He found nothing.
“If you mean that,” Saks said, “then come over here with me.”
28
George watched that dead, misting sea and it almost felt like it watched him, too. You watched that graveyard expanse long enough, you started thinking of the sea as more than a natural force but as a living, breathing entity. Something sentient and calculating, a huge evil intelligence that plotted your death with inhuman patience.
And when you were talking about the sea George was watching, those ideas came to you real easy.
Like someone or something wants me to think that.
But he wasn’t going back there again.
That was Fog-Devil territory.
So George kept his mind busy by thinking of food, of drinks. Cigarettes. He was pretty sure he would’ve sold his soul for a can of beer.
He kept watching the sea and that’s when he saw… well, he didn’t know exactly what he was seeing. Something in the fog. Nothing gigantic or especially threatening this time, just, well a shadow or shape flitting around in the mist.
He looked and it was gone. But it had been there. Something had been there.
George swallowed, figured he was hallucinating. It wouldn’t have been the first time. You stared into that dirty fog long enough, you could see just about anything. Some things you wanted to see and others you’d rather not look upon. It was the nature of the fog, always slowing drifting and churning like the steam coming off a bubbling pot, but slower and thicker and almost curdled-looking.
Again, a suggestion of movement out there.
He looked over at Soltz and Cushing. They were sleeping. Gosling was, too. It was George’s watch. And what had Gosling said to him? Just sweep your eyes back and forth, George, never stare at anything too long or you’ll start seeing things that ain’t there. Gosling had been dead serious when he said that. There was not so much as a glimmer of humor in his eyes. Gosling had spent a lot of his life on watches and he knew the funny things you might see out there.
George saw that flutter of motion again and shook his head. Jesus, but a cigarette would have been good. A cigarette and a cup of hot coffee. They would have straightened his head right out.
He closed his eyes, then opened them and looked around in the raft. Just those three men dozing in the roomy interior beneath the canopy and George himself at the door, the fog moving out there, drawing him in.
You need me, Gosling had said, you wake me, hear?
Gosling. Jesus. Mother Hen.
George looked away from the fog, had to force himself to, and studied the water instead. It was steaming and rank, filmed with a rotting membrane that seemed to be equal parts sediment, slime, and decaying organic matter. From time to time it quivered like jelly, as if some underwater current was stirring it. Little islands of weed and knotted creepers floated on it, a scum of pink algae.
The mist itself seemed chilly and damp, but the sea was warm. Like a mud bath, it was warm and oddly inviting.
Something moved out in the fog again.
When George looked up, it was gone.
Every time he averted his eyes, it moved. Like maybe it did not want to be seen, not yet. Which got George to think something was playing with him. Something was playing headgames with him, maybe wanting to scare him or disturb him or just make him goddamn uneasy. If that was the case, then they or it were doing a fine job for George was all those things. Gooseflesh had spread out on his lower belly and his balls had sucked up now, like they were afraid of being exposed.
Motion again.
Then it was gone.
Like some child, it occurred to George, some kid out there flitting about in the fog, playing hide-and-seek and catch-me-if-you-can. Wanting George to get a peek, but no more. Not yet. Not until he or she was ready, because then it was going to be real funny-
But it wasn’t funny.
George badly wanted to pop a flare out there and see what was lurking beyond the fog, sliding in and out of it like a naughty little boy hiding in the curtains.
George kept swallowing, but he couldn’t seem to moisturize his throat. It felt like old machine parts, rusty and seized-up, choked with dust and mouse droppings.
The sea was quivering a bit, those clots of fetid weeds sluicing about as if something was pushing them from below. A great dark mass of them swept against the side of the raft with a weird, whispering motion like somebody breathing.
George caught the movement this time.
And this time, it did not try to hide.
What he was seeing was a figure standing just at the periphery of the fog bank, enshrouded in wisps of fog, yet very visible. So visible that he could see that the figure was small and that it was a little girl of all things. She stood stock still like a mannequin or a puppet waiting for fingers to work her.
George blinked and rubbed his eyes.
When he looked back, she was still there.
There was a chill moving up his spine now, spreading out over his shoulders and forearms. He was telling himself that he could not be seeing a little girl standing out there. She would have sank like a rock and what would
